Oculus VR apologises for certificate gaffe

Facebook-owned Oculus VR has apologised for a gaffe which saw its software disabled for all customers globally, thanks to the simple mistake of not renewing a security certificate in time.

The issue with Oculus VR's software, first brought to our attention in a post on the forum, was all-pervasive: Anyone attempting to use an Oculus Rift headset yesterday found the company's mandatory software package displaying the error 'Can't reach Oculus Runtime Services.' Those attempting to troubleshoot the issue quickly found out why: The company had, embarrassingly, allowed a security certificate to expire.

While a temporary workaround is to change the system clock to before the certificate expired - a move which can cause problems with other software, particularly security packages - Oculus confirmed it has been investigating the issue for a proper fix. 'We are aware of and actively investigating an issue impacting ability to access Rift software,' the company explained in its initial update on the problem. 'Our teams apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing you and appreciate your patience while we work on a resolution.'

Following confirmation that the security certificate was indeed to blame, the company has released a patch which replaces said certificate - but, in a cruel twist, the expired certificate means that the software can't reach the Oculus VR servers in order to download and apply said patch. For those still experiencing issues, a manual fix is required: Users can either uninstall the Oculus software bundle and re-install it from a fresh download, or they can download a manual patch which overwrites the faulty certificate. Full instructions for the latter are available on the official support portal.